Wednesday, July 23, 2014

It's a picture that we can
identify with--people standing in a long line waiting for the Help desk. Looking
at the context of Jethro's advice to Moses in Exodus 18, it is possible that
Moses was deciding each question, case by case, as individual problems. The
first step in the advice that Jethro gave Moses is "Teach them the
statutes and the decisions; show them the way they must follow, and what their
course must be" (Exodus 18:20). Without a consistent set of principles, you
have to deal with every situation that arises on its own. Children are easier
to live with and learn more effectively if parents and teachers have consistent
and responsible expectations. In years of managing a business, I learned that
procedures that are basic, simple and practical get followed better than
theoretical systems that look good on paper but not so good in reality.

First question: where do these
statues, decisions, ways and courses come from? Moses has already said that the
advice and decisions he gives come from God. Jethro is saying that Moses is on
track with this, but he needs to educate the community as a whole, not one
person, one crisis at a time. So in the next chapter, we see Moses moving
his mob to the base of Mt Sinai, and preparing them as a community for an
encounter with God. God tells Moses "If you obey My voice, and hold fast
to My covenant, you of all the nations will be My very own, for all the earth
is Mine." After all, He made it and knows better than we do how it’s
supposed to work. Then Moses "summoned the elders of the people, putting
before them all that the LORD had bidden him. Then the people said as one, All
that the LORD has said, we will do." (Exodus 19:3-8) Note that God, and
Moses, asked for a commitment to obedience before they were given the covenant;
that it was not negotiated between equals but taken in faith that God was a lot
smarter and more powerful than they were. Their faith was an obedience based on
their knowledge of God.

Then, and only then, in Exodus
20, does God call Moses up the mountain and outline the system.It's pretty simple and straightforward; ten
basic principles that, if everybody gets on the page together, will enable them
to live together in peace.In fact, if
done right, Moses' management team would have had an easy job. However,
considering that God's creations are not puppets and have ambitions and ideas
beyond their own capacities…we are still struggling to make it work.

God has given us a lot of
leeway in how we deal with His commandments. On one end, we can make them a god
in themselves, and become slaves to the letter of the law at the expense of His
calling to charity and love; Jesus found that was where too many of His people
had gone.At the other end, we can
decide we can't do it, don't want to do it, and then find out in the long run
that we are are not as smart as we thought, and even find ourselves at the end
of that long line outside Moses' tent. Look at the world we live in today;every day what we see from our own homes and in our immediate
neighborhoods to all the way across the planet, we see what I've seen described as "moral-free". And how many people do we see offering
advice--good, bad, and scary?

This is what Pastor Paul's
JumpStart program is all about--answering the question that I once saw on a
label right next to the plug on a small appliance: "Honestly--have you
read the instructions?"

Thursday, July 17, 2014

We were all created with a "thorn in our flesh" . Some of them are more visible than others.

Once upon a time there were two brothers. (Actually, there were more, but this story is about the oldest two.) The older one was the Golden Boy--handsome, a popular playboy, knew he was going to grow up to be King. Unfortunately, he was not necessarily a nice person; irresponsible, did not always make the best choices. When it came time to live up to his heritage, he walked away.

The younger brother was the responsible one; did what his family needed him to do. His "thorn" was that he could not speak well; he had a stammer. He also had a wife who found a speech therapist that was able to help him learn to speak well enough to do what needed to be done. It might even have been the handicap that made him the person that was needed at the time.

At first glance, it looked like the younger brother was dealt the worse hand. But with the right attitude, the right person by his side, and the right mentor, this three-fold cord held in a situation that literally had the fate of the world at risk, and prevailed. The younger brother, King George VI of Great Britain, ended his Christmas message in 1939, as Europe was descending into war, with this:

"I believe from my heart that the cause that binds together my peoples and our faithful and gallant Allies is the cause of Christian civilization. On no other basis can a true civilization be built. Let us remember this through the dark times ahead of us and when we are making the peace for which all men pray. A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted. In the meantime I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you: 'I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year , "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."' May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all."
[http://www.royal.gov.uk]

Friday, July 11, 2014

Mosaics, built up one tile at a time, can be unique works
of art. Human beings, created one DNA molecule at a time,
are also unique. We are told in Scripture that we are created "in the
image of God", so why are we not the same image? Think how big God is,
bigger than everyone who has ever lived, or will live, put together. Imagine a
mosaic, each one of us the image of a single tile, all together making an image
of God. Each tile is comparatively small and different, but each is important
to the whole

We are not only the product of our physical DNA, but we
each have responded to outside inputs through our whole lives. Some things are
inborn--not just our obvious physical characteristics but our temperaments and
reactions. I have four children; they were all different from birth. One of
them refused to eat on the hospital's
schedule and screamed for 20 minutes--at 2 days old. She knows what she wants
and goes for it. One of them took whatever was offered and went with it. . One
of them would start out in a place that that was usually about five steps away
from what she was really after. One of them would lay out what he wanted, and
is very talented at getting people to go along with truly amazing things. Even
my husband, whom I knew just about as well as anyone on the planet, was a
different person with a different brain in a different head, and I learned that
I could not expect him to think the way I did.

One of the reasons many people come to this country is
that it is relatively open to differences. Many cultures in this world are very
other-directed, and much of what is expected of people is forced from the
outside into a fairly narrow range. One thing that is characteristic of such
cultures is that a strong-willed person can mold those expectations in line
with his own self-interest. Often there are habits and traditions that may not
be healthy, but they've always been
done that way and there is a lot of inertia behind them. And then, there are
cultures and sub-cultures that become enamoured by change for its own sake,
without adequate evaluation of the results.

It's easy to
forget that we are all different, and see things differently and value them
differently. We can judge narrowly by a single facet of a person, and give it
too much weight, either negatively or positively, as if nothing else about them
is of any value. Sometimes we haven't
learned how to peacefully deal with differences. We once knew a man who was an
honest, ethical, straightforward person, but had a terrible time keeping a job.
He would get a job, but if asked to do something that he thought was wrong or
dishonest, would refuse--in a way that usually ended up with "then I hit
him and got fired."On the other
hand, we see people who are persons of good will, assuming that everyone, given
the opportunity, will respond rationally and cooperatively. Unfortunately, they
are often facing people whose motives and characters are not what they appear.

This is another place where we do not often understand the
value of spiritual discernment. There are times when we need to pray against an
evil that is working through someone we have to deal with. We can pray for
people who are judging us--sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, in situations
that we cannot handle on our own. We can hang onto an attitude at the expense
of a relationship; God showed me some years ago that a cause of my own anger
was usually self-pity.. We can listen to good friends who talk good sense into
our lives. We not only have Jesus'
example, but His strength, wisdom and presence. We can allow Him to make us the
person we were created to be, and to appreciate His working in other people as
well.John describes Jesus in John
2:24-25: "He knew them [the crowd in the Temple] inside and out, knew how
untrustworthy they were. He didn't
need any help in seeing right through them." We can ask Him to show us who
is open to Him, and who He needs to protect us against.

Friday, July 4, 2014

July 4, 1776 was a turning point in the history of our country. We are still today struggling with the implications of what happened that day. It had been almost 20 years in the making; actual battles over who lived where and what kind of society they were building had been going on since before 1760. Most of the colonists had come to America to do something or make something that was different than what they had been doing. It wasn't just Englishmen; there were Spanish in the south and west, French in the Mississippi Valley, Dutch in New Amsterdam (that became New York) who brought the stories of St Nicholas; Germans and Swedes in the middle colonies, Africans almost everywhere. They had come as farmers, entrepeneurs, religious refugees, adventurers and explorers, indentured servants and slaves. In some ways they had freedoms that they had not had "back home", but still they were not on their own; the strings were being pulled from London. The political philosophy of the day was "mercantilism;" the idea that colonies exist for the benefit of the home country. The Englishmen knew their rights as English subjects, but they were not being respected.

There is no such thing as "government". There are assemblages of people who have acquired power and influence, and their own ideas as to what a central authority could or should be doing or not doing. I am often reminded of I Samuel 8, when the Israelites come to him and ask for a King. Samuel gives the folks a laundry list of what a King will do. Up to this point, the Israelites had not had a central authority other than God, as revealed by prophets and judges. One reason the people gave for wanting a king was the incompetence and corruption of Samuel's sons. What they did not stop to think of was that people are people; kings are people, bureaucrats are people, leaders of all kinds are people, each with upsides and downsides. What the American colonists knew was that the people in England who had authority over them were not listening, did not think of the colonists as real people, created by God. One reason many of them had emigrated is because they were not getting economic opportunities or religious freedom back home. What was started in 1776 wasn't perfect, but it did set forth a recognition of God's creation and both the potential and shortcomings of real people. Can we recognize today that God has made all of us with potentials and problems that we cannot deal with well without His strength, guidance, faith, hope and love?